And lived well in winter. They rented out the city theatre for the whole winter and gave it to the Malorossiysk troupe for a short period of time, then to the magician, then to local amateurs. The deer was full and shining with pleasure, and Kukin thin and yellow and complained of terrible losses, although the whole winter was not bad. At night he coughed, and she sang him raspberry and fake color, rubbed him with cologne, wrapped him in her soft shawls.
- How cute you are to me! - She spoke sincerely, smoothing his hair. - How pretty you are!
In the great post he went to Moscow to recruit a troupe, and she couldn't sleep without him, she sat by the window and looked at the stars. And at that time, she compared herself to chickens, which also do not sleep all night and feel anxious when there is no rooster in the henhouse. Kukin stayed in Moscow and wrote that he would return to the Holy One, and in his letters he had already made orders about "Tivoli". But on a passionate Monday night, late in the evening, suddenly there was a sinister knocking at the gate; somebody hit the gate like a barrel: boom! boom! boom! boom! The sleepy cook, spanking her bare feet in the puddles, ran to open the gate.
- Open it, do mercy! - Someone behind the gates said deaf bass. - A telegram for you!
The deer had received telegrams from her husband before, but now for some reason she has become numb. She printed the telegram with trembling hands and read the following:
"Ivan Petrovich died today suddenly shuts down waiting for the orders of the funeral Tuesday.
So it was printed in the telegram "funeral" and some other incomprehensible word "suchala", the signature was the director of the opera company.
- My darling! - Olenka sobbed. - Vanichka is my dear, my dear little dove! Why did I meet you? Why did I recognize you and love you? Who did you leave your poor deer, poor, miserable?
Kukina was buried on Tuesday, in Moscow, on Vagankovo; Olenka returned home on Wednesday, and as soon as she walked in, she fell on her bed and sobbed so loudly that she could be heard on the street and in the neighboring yards.
- Sweetheart! - The neighbors were talking, baptizing. - Sweetheart Olga Semenovna, Mother, how she kills herself!
Three months later, one day, Olenka returned from the massacre, sad, in deep mourning. It happened that one of her neighbours, Vasily Andreich Pustovalov, who was also returning from the church and who was managing the forest warehouse of Babakaev's merchant, was walking with her. He wore a straw hat and a white vest with a gold chain and looked more like a landlord than a merchant.
- Everything has its own order, Olga Semyonovna," he said with a degree of compassion in her voice, "and if anyone of our neighbors dies, it means that it is God's will, and in this case we must remember ourselves and endure with obedience.
Bringing Olenka to the gate, he said goodbye and went on. After that, all day long she heard his dignified voice, and as soon as she closed her eyes, as his dark beard was seen. She liked him very much. Apparently, she impressed him, too, because after a while an old lady came to her to drink coffee, a lady she didn't know very well, and as soon as she sat down at the table, she immediately talked about Pustovalov, about the fact that he was a good, respectable man and that he would be happy to have a bride. Three days later Pustovalov himself came with a visit; he sat for a short time, ten minutes, and spoke little, but Olenka fell in love with him, so much so that all night she did not sleep and burned like in a fever, and in the morning sent for an elderly lady. Soon she was wooed, then there was a wedding.
Pustovalov and Olenka, married, lived well. Usually he sat in the forest warehouse until lunch, then left for business, and he was replaced by Olenka, who sat in the office until the evening and wrote the bills and released the goods.
- Now the forest is becoming more expensive by twenty percent every year," she said to buyers and acquaintances. - Have mercy on us, before we traded in local woods, now Vasichka has to go every year to Mogilev province to get wood. And what a tariff! - She said, in terror, covering both cheeks with her hands. - What a tariff!
It seemed to her that she had been trading in forest for a long time, that the most important and necessary thing in life is the forest, and something native, touching was heard in her words: A beam, a round beam, a ribbon, a ribbon, a silk, a nameless nameless grate, a carriage, a humpback... At night, when she was sleeping, she dreamt of whole mountains of planks and bowls, long, endless lines of carts taking the forest somewhere far beyond the city; She dreamt of a whole regiment of twelve-apartment, five-tiered logs standing up in the war to the forest warehouse, like logs, beams and humpbacks, knocking, making a loud sound of dry wood, everything fell down and stood up again, cluttering on each other; Deer screamed in her sleep, and Pustovalov spoke gently to her:
- Deer, what is wrong with you, dear? Cross over!
What thoughts were the husband's thoughts, and so was she. If he thought that the room was hot or that things were quiet now, so did she. Her husband didn't like any entertainment and sat at home on holidays, and so did she.